New Crows role for Smart

Nigel Smart will become the new Chief Operating Officer of the Adelade Football Club

We chose him in an exacting national selection process from a first-class field of candidates

Rob Chapman

Nigel Smart will on 1 March become the Chief Operating Officer of the Adelaide Football Club.

Chairman Rob Chapman said Smart will fill a key off-field leadership position in the management team as the Club builds and gathers itself for an exciting era of challenge and promise.

“Nigel Smart is highly accomplished and brings to our Club an irresistible blend of achievement as a manager, businessman and footballer,” Chapman said.

“Nigel knows business and he knows football. He has a record of success both inside and outside the Adelaide Football Club as a leader of people and builder of businesses. We chose him in an exacting national selection process from a first-class field of candidates.”

Chapman said Smart, who has been Deputy Chairman of the Club since 2009, will immediately step down from the Board.

Smart joins the Crows from Variety The Children’s Charity, where he is its Chief Executive Officer.

“I look forward to continuing to do all that I can to contribute to the success of our great Club,” Smart said.

“The Crows and its people – players, staff and supporters – have been at the centre of my life for the greater part of it. I’m excited and grateful for the opportunity to return here as a leader of a terrific group of people, many of whom I have grown up with and admire tremendously.”

Smart’s previous business posts over the past 20 years include national sales and marketing manager of the Jobs Statewide Group, national business development manager of Disability Works Australia, network development manager SA/NT for the Toyota Motor Corporation and sales and sponsorship manager SA/NT for Lion Nathan Australia.

He holds a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Adelaide’s Graduate School of Business and is a Bachelor of Arts from the Flinders University.

Smart played 278 games for the Crows between 1991 and 2004 and was vice captain in both premiership years and again in 1999. He was an All Australian in his first year of AFL and again in 1993 and 1998.

He served on the AFL Players Association’s executive board throughout his playing career.